


dear myself

by Anonymous



Series: listen, hum softly; hear the wind whistle its calming tune [1]
Category: Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Amnesia, Angst, Dream SMP Lore, Karl Time-Travels to Escape his Worries, Light Angst, M/M, Multi, Polyamorous Character, Polyamory, Q dies and Sap is implied to have lost his last life to Dream, Quackity is struck by lightning from Dream, Sapnap fights Dream in a 1v1 Manhunt, Tales Of The SMP, Time Travel, Time-Traveller Amnesic c! Karl Jacobs, main is karlnap here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-25
Updated: 2021-01-25
Packaged: 2021-03-17 20:54:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28980687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Don’t forget me when I’m away, he whispers. He presses a kiss, light as a feather, on my forehead, by his tip-toes, smiles again, wavering warmth.He’s gone by the next morning I wake, and the bed is suddenly too big, too much for me.I hope he’ll come back.Love, always,Karl JacobsHe forgets. Memory spills through his mind like water between fingers.
Relationships: Alexis | Quackity/Karl Jacobs, Alexis | Quackity/Karl Jacobs/Sapnap, Alexis | Quackity/Sapnap (Video Blogging RPF), Karl Jacobs/Sapnap
Series: listen, hum softly; hear the wind whistle its calming tune [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2125770
Comments: 17
Kudos: 232
Collections: anonymous





	dear myself

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by the recent events on Tales of the SMP!  
> i have not watched it myself, but i found potential angst :) <3  
> yw

Karl searches. 

He’s not clear what he’s searching for when he spirals through the ages. His head tells him absolutely nothing for the years he’s lived (Where? Where did he live?), and it’s weirdly not as troubling it should be. All he knows of is the faintest breeze on the bare skin of his palms and on his face, the cloak billowing behind him, caught in the breeze of time travel. The blue-tinted googles sit securely on his head. 

He feels _free_. Almost happy, but his heart feels off. It feels fake.

 _Dear myself,_ he recalls, scrawled messily, hurriedly in the yellowing pages of a leather-bound journal, blotched with squid ink.

  
_Today, Dream’s finally confined in that abomination of a jail cell he’d commissioned. Fitting, the end to such a horrible villain, thrown unceremoniously into his own cage. We triumph in the wake of his downfall. Sapnap’s uncertain, really, no matter how much he shrugs and proclaims that he doesn’t care for Dream (mutually). I see in his swirling grey eyes that he still cares, and above all, Dream is— was— his friend. I reassure him that Dream’s not going to come out anytime soon, but it’s conflict dancing in his irises when he gives me a half-smile and faces the other way._

_Quackity is rejoicing, yelling his little curses in the highest voice possible, and I’m reminded of his bravery, his courage, the way he squared off Dream the day George got dethroned. I want to be like him. Frivolous, daring, charming, likeable. Just like Sapnap is. I love them._

_I’ve got a weird feeling in my guts. I don’t think I’ve got the slightest inkling of when Dream tried to manipulate Tommy, or anything that’s happened in the time period._

_(Sapnap furrows his brow and tells me that my hoodie’s different. I look at it, and I don’t find the problem. It worries me.)_

_Writing after further developments,_   
_Karl_

  
He blinks slowly. His soul gnaws and claws at his insides, like it’s telling him to remember, remember, _remember_. He tries to tell it that he can’t. 

  
_Dear myself,_

_Q died today._

_Lightning struck from the heavens, and it hit him while he was laughing with Tommy, entered his body the moment he tilted his head in a boisterous laugh. I’ve heard that he’d froze, mouth hanging open, eyes staring, and he’d flopped right over, right in front of Tommy. Tommy had run, yelling in panic, and I think at that moment I knew something had been forcefully removed from my grasp._

_Sapnap thinks (knows) that the lightning bolt that hit Q was from the man in the mask. (He’s escaped. Techno owed him a favour. God damn it._

_We’re both quiet today. We’re reminded of the two hearts on both our wrists._

_It’s okay, and I’ve been travelling non-stop. Sometimes I see Quackity’s ascendants. When I return, the land grows more and more unfamiliar. That ender chest was never there, wasn’t it? What discs?_

_Sapnap smiles sadly at me when I knock on his door and ask him where I stayed. The smile isn’t bright like it was. It stings, but I don’t know what makes my heart twinge like that._

_Dream’s gone. All of us live in fear, and red vines creep and envelope structures like it’s made to be there._

_Later, Sapnap tells me he’s leaving._

_I ask,_ where? _And he says_ wherever Dream is _, reasons that the og people who first landed in the server are all drugged (George, eternally sleeping, fed a sort of enchanted pill undoubtedly by Dream), and busy? Corrupted? (Bad, Ant— why are their eyes like that?) It’s with finality that Sapnap glances over, and there’s water in his large eyes, flushed pink, regretful._

Don’t forget me when I’m away _, he whispers. He presses a kiss, light as a feather, on my forehead, by his tip-toes, smiles again, wavering warmth._

_He’s gone by the next morning I wake, and the bed is suddenly too big, too much for me._

_I hope he’ll come back._

_Love, always,_   
_Karl Jacobs_

  
Karl flips in and out of the timeline. Sometimes he’s in the past, sometimes he’s not, sometimes he does not exist. Everything filters itself from his brain, pours through like water between his fingers. He does not remember who _Sapnap_ or _Q_ or _Dream_ or _George_ or _Tommy_ is. The names are foreign when he rolls them experimentally in his figurative fingers, and they soon drop like marbles from his thoughts.

  
_Dear myself,_

_To pass the time I’ve begin to travel more, more, more. It’s clearly, as I see now, detrimental to my memory, my very being, but I can not physically stop myself from ripping the portal open and diving through thin air, flying through the ages._

_I am losing myself. I am less at home than I am travelling._

_Sapnap has not returned, as I am writing this. But I’ve had a dream._

_I think I was Sapnap. Strangely. He was panting, struggling, the netherite axe gripped firmly in his bloody grasp. Someone laughs, slightly familiar, and my— his gaze shifted and fixed on a man in green, cracked smile mask on face, a crazed eye squared on him. He was flying._

_Sapnap said something, and I do not remember what, and the flying man laughed high and cold at the crack in his voice. He was on one life. The threat of his last life buzzed under his temple, and I remember, at least, that he was terrified and hurt at the same time. He wanted to go home._

_The man in the mask yelled something, and his vision had whitened out, throat sore, and there was pain everywhere._

_He wanted to go_ home.

_His vision went dark, and I was awake._

_He’s not dead. Not until I see for myself._

_I’ll make whoever potentially killed him pay._

_…what was I writing about?_

_K. J._

  
He does not care. None of his body is held back by anything, anymore, and he whoops in pure delight as he zips through the ages. His unconscious mind says _you’re worse than Ranboo now_ , but he makes nothing from the strange statement, yet another name unfamiliar, insignificant. 

  
_Myself:_

_I do not remember. It frightens me, when I wander these strange lands Past Karl had called home, a crooked picture frame of a dark-haired man with a bandana and another one with a blue beanie, next to what I know is myself._

_This one man who I believe calls himself Phil looks at me with pity. I believe that I do not need it._

_(…why do I keep thinking of ‘remember me?’ I do not recall.)_

_Someone was supposed to return. Who is it? Why do I spend the time I do on the present-time timeline yearning, wishing for something, someone, like I’m dancing on a tightrope?_

_The server people have started to try and wake the blue-clothed sleeping beauty up. He does not wake no matter the potions given, eyes closed, pandering. His lips are an unhealthy shade of blue. The said government is panicking. I think it’s merely a boy nearing adulthood. I pity him._

_I’m gonna go back a time for a bit._

_-Karl_

  
Where he does not remember, he frets, but it’s always pulled back, forgetting whatever made him worry in the first place. 

The ring he’s always had sits peacefully on his ring finger, like it fits. He wonders if he was ever engaged. Probably not. He’s always been a bit iffy towards relationships.

(He’s drowning, drowning, drowning in waves that muddle and obscure his memory, pushes his head mercilessly under water, keeps it there when he struggles to breathe, thrashing, begging)

(Where are they?)

( _Who_ are they?)

It’s a sudden swell of his chest and his face is wet. _Oh_ , he thinks, brings a hand to his cheek, feels moisture on his palm, _I’m crying_. There’s loss. But he’s blank like a sheet, unable to think. He’s drowning.

He’s going to get worse and worse and he’s not going to remember his name or who he even is in a day, a month, a year. He can’t stop his memory deteriorating, backing up until all he knows is nothing at all. 

He might _die_ in time travel.

_(Where is my anchor?)_

(Dead in a ditch for all he knows.)

He cries, and the tears wet his skin and take away heat, leaving him cold, drowning, drowning, drowning, dying. 


End file.
